


Whirlpool

by Cockbite (personalized_radio)



Series: The Cockbite Syndicate [10]
Category: The Creatures | Cow Chop RPF
Genre: F/M, Mafia AU, TW: Violence, The Origins Of Charles Whirlpool (And His Sweetie), there are NOT ENOUGH CC LADIES, tw: reference to suicide, yes both of james' parents are characters played by james give me a break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 20:49:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17946869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/personalized_radio/pseuds/Cockbite
Summary: Evil is not born, it is raised.At least, that's what most people say.Those people have never met Charles.





	Whirlpool

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadQueen/gifts).



> just a short thing i wrote up for Einchop bc we both love charles whirlpool way too much. tammy is a claim we thought would be hilarious to go with for Sweetie soooo there we go <3

Evil is not born, it is raised.  
  
At least, that's what most people say.   
  
Those people have never met Charles.    
  
\-    
  
He's not born Whirlpool. When he's born, his Ma names him Charles and his Pops gives him Wilson.    
  
Charles Wilson sounds like a stockbroker to him. His name sounds like it belongs to someone living on Chestnut, not smack dab in the middle of Harrowgate.    
  
They die when he's young. Just old enough to keep Jamie.    
  
He liked his Ma, so he decides to keep Charles the first time one of the bosses asks his name. He's not as fond of Pops, though.    
  
There's a book, see. His little sister's reading it for school, some Greek shit he could care less about, but he remembers the snippets of the story she was telling over the mixed greens and meatloaf the night before, about the sea monster who lives under a rock and the other one who lived in a rock across the way. He remembers, more than the names, that she'd described it and how it had lead to the deaths of soldiers.    
  
He thinks he can probably live up to that.    
  
He says, “The name's Whirlpool, boss. Charlie Whirlpool.”    
  
“Ice 'em, Whirlpool,” his boss says, and he's talking about the dolts who owe the kinda money someone like Charles Wilson should be making, and Charlie nods and ices 'em.    
He only has to introduce himself a few times before his reputation starts to proceed him.   
  
His sister finishes the book, and then high school, and then she finishes her own life when the sweet kid she'd met in senior year doesn't make an honest woman out of her for the baby she's carrying. Charlie finishes the kid for her, and carries her face in a locket around his neck, his Ma on one side and Jamie on the other.    
He goes by Whirlpool and thinks of them when his name gets around.   


-

Her name's Sweetie.  
  
That's not really her name, but it's what she goes by and that's fine with Charlie. They meet when he's twenty-eight and making his way up the ladder, one corpse at a time.  
  
She's classy, for the kinda people he meets in his business. Knows what she wants even if she's only nineteen.  
  
Charlie isn't Italian. He's Puerto Rican, but there's no Puerto Rican mob around these parts and he isn't Italian. He can never be a made man, no matter how many people he kills or how much money he raises or how often he gets out from under the pigs. There are only a few pros to that situation: One, he can work for whichever family he sees fit to accept jobs from, because he belongs to none of them; Two, he can start his own organization.  
  
By the time he meets Sweetie, the Whirlpool crew is twenty-strong. She's the third youngest sister of Goldie's cousin, less a spitfire and more the kind of trick candle that always lights back up after a gust of air.  
  
She doesn't want a family. She tells him as much when they're both splayed out on a mattress, fully clothed, high as a pair of kites, ankles brushing were her skirts pulled up a little and his slacks have somehow folded up.  
  
He doesn't want a family either.  
  
One kid, he says. One kid, to carry the name or to take the fall if need be, because Charlie plans long term.  
  
Sweetie laughs, voice husky with smoke from the discarded pipe.  
  
“You're an evil man, Charlie.” She says and they kiss. He doesn't feel so evil when they kiss.

-

They get married when Charlie is thirty-one. It's a small service. They go to Vegas. Goldie is there, watching with his hat in his hands and a tear in his eye and Sweetie brought the only sister she cares to have know she got married.   
  
The rock on her finger, Charlie had pried it off the finger of a women he'd killed on a job six months ago. He had thought it might be too morbid for his Sweetie, but she'd plucked it from the pliers herself, slid it on her finger to admire the view, so he'd dropped to one knee in the pool of blood and asked her to marry him.    
  
She'd laughed and said yes.    
  
So they get married in Vegas.    
  
The Whirlpools are eight-six-strong now. Philly is crowded, though. It's so close to New York and Jersey and there are a lot of families who have generational claims on a lot of places. Charlie sees the ceiling coming, but he doesn't know how to break through it.    
  
They kiss in front of the priest, sign their names - birth names, at least - on a piece of paper, and it's a done deal.    
  
“Missus Sweetie Whirlpool,” she says with a starry look in her eye Charlie's never seen    
  
“Sounds good.” He says, and wonders if this is what it feels like to be happy.   


-   


They honeymoon in Los Santos. It's only a few hours by plane and Sweetie says she's heard rumors that it's the kind of place they'd fit right in. Some girls, they'd want to go to Hawaii or Europe. Sweetie wants to see the grime of the streets, and so does Charlie.  
  
It's not so bad, when they get there. They go to the beach every morning, walk down the wet shore with his slacks rolled up and her skirts short enough that she doesn't have to bother. The afternoons, they spend at the boardwalk or in their suite.  
  
But the nights...oh, the nights are what make Charlie fall in love with this town.  
  
The clubs are okay, the drinks better, the company even more so.  
  
No one sits on this throne, not yet. It's all free real estate, just waiting for the right man.  
  
“You could be the right man,” Sweetie says on night, breathing warm on Charlie's chest, against an old bullet wound.  
  
“You're more conniving than I am, Missus Whirlpool.”  
  
“Would you have it any other way?” She says, and he finds that the answer is no.

-

He brings the Whirlpools to Los Santos.  
  
He and Sweetie don't leave after the honeymoon.  
  
He buys a nice house outside the city, with a garden for Sweetie and a third floor neither of them care to use. The main attraction is the ball room, though, for Sweetie to hold her parties. It's the only thing she's ever really put her foot down on, that she wants to have parties, and she's got his rock and his name so he gives his girl what she wants.  
  
It's not hard, in the end, to take over Los Santos. They live in that house for almost a decade, and then he buys a bigger house with a bigger garden and a bigger ballroom and he keeps the first home as a reminder of their journey, and because Sweetie had loves that house.   


-   


He's fifty-three when he and Sweetie decide it's time he needs an heir.   


“I'm a little young for pregnancy.” Sweetie complains, but she glows when the doctor says she's carrying and she just gets brighter as the months go by.   


Neither of them have ever been interested in family. The Whirlpools are their family, in a way.

The baby, though, neither of them had really wanted. Until they both, suddenly, had.   


-   


Sweetie doesn't have an easy go of it, but she keeps that glow even as Charlie sees what's happening and begins to dim.   


-   


“His name is James.” Sweetie says, “After your sister.”   


“He's killing you.” Charlie snaps, “We need to get rid of him.”   


“Over my dead body,” Sweetie says, “So you might as well keep him, anyway.”   


“This isn't a joke.”   


She smiles, hand resting on her belly and rubbing her baby bump with a gardener's hand.   


He goes to a shop to get a new locket, one with room for three pictures.   


-

“James,” Sweetie says, barely, and it's the last thing she says. Her eyes are sightless before she even closes them, make-up ruined from sweat, hair a mess, but still glowing and beautiful as the first day he'd seen her, bumming cigs off Goldie.  


The nurses are running around, he gets pushed to the corner so they can work, but he knows she's gone.   


Later, he's handed a baby wrapped in blue. He's got a head of hair, curly as the day is long. Spitting image of Charlie, except the nose.   


“We need to fill out his certificate, sir,” someone says.   


James Wilson he gives them, and then his name and Sweetie's name.   


He goes home, hands the kid to Goldie, and sleeps in Sweetie's garden that night.   


-   


He has her things packed away and brought to the first house. He cancels the party she'd had planned to celebrate James’ birth.   


He puts her picture with Ma and Jamie, around his neck.   


He goes on. The Whirlpools have to keep on keeping on, even with a shape at his side that is missing.   


-   


James has Sweetie's nose and her smile. He's got her big eyes. Charlie can't stand to look at him.   


He calls him Jimmy, when he can't just call him kid. He doesn't want to call him James.   


It's like having all three of the women he's loved and lost in one little brat right in front of him, and Charlie knew he was going to Hell. He just hadn't thought Hell would come to him before he'd even died.   


-   


He's close to sixty when his knees go. Two bullets, bad timing, he's never been good at dodging.   


The wheelchair is nice. Goldie pushes him around on it. Jimmy watches from around corners, Sweetie's eyes big and dark in his face.   


-   


Charlie's hair goes white.   


He thinks about retiring.


End file.
